Green clearance: PMO can always step in but not to mess it up further

Manmohan Singh is right. The norms and guidelines for environmental clearance are too complicated to allow speedy disposal of projects. They are also full of loopholes that make the environment bleed. Therefore, the prime minister and his office (PMO) have been trying to “streamline” the clearance process. As the head of the government, the PM is free to direct any ministry on policies. The government can also modify certain norms under the regulatory laws without seeking Parliament’s approval which is required to amend the laws per se. But if transparency and efficiency were all the PM was looking to achieve, it would have sought to make the norms simple and robust. Instead, what the government has been pushing to achieve is simply a weaker regulatory regime. The PMO letters now in public domain may shock those who were not watching the two UPA governments and the PMO all these years. Dr Singh had publicly assured South Korean President Lee Myung-bak of speedy clearance to Posco’s Odisha project in August 2010 and his Minister for Steel Virbhadra Singh even set a six-month deadline. While the issue was being decided by the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), the PM repeated the assurance at the 17th Asean summit at Hanoi in October 2010 and at the G-20 summit at Seoul in November 2010. Even during UPA I, a file noting on 8 May 2007 shows that the finance ministry sought an update on the Posco project and the next day the department of divestment wanted a status report from the MoEF by 18 May. Within a week, immediately before leaving the MoEF to take charge of the Telecom Ministry, A Raja issued the environment clearance to Posco’s port project. Again, a letter dated 4 June 2007 from the finance ministry sought the status of the Posco applications. The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the MoEF cleared the plant at its 20 June meeting. [caption id=“attachment_1400173” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. PTI[/caption] In fact, UPA II resented the enactment of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, an achievement it showcased during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. While the FRA itself was silent on tricky issues, such as post-settlement alienation of rights, then environment minister Jairam Ramesh made sure that the Act would become, in time, an albatross around his government’s neck. In July 2009, the MoEF issued an order making certificates from gram sabhas on implementation of the FRA and their consent for land diversion, mandatory for forest clearance. The government saw red when Ramesh cited this order in January 2010 as a condition for the clearance issued to Posco. Ramesh compromised soon. The MoEF issued another “conditional” clearance to Posco, subject to an “assurance” from the state that no ‘eligible persons’ under the FRA lived in the project area. The state was happy to oblige and the Posco file was cleared in May 2010. Ramesh took the same “conditional” route to clear other big projects such as the nuclear plant in Maharashtra’s Jaitapur (November 2010, 35 conditions), the Navi Mumbai airport (November 2010, 32 conditions) or the Steel Authority of India’s mines in Chiria’s elephant forests in Jharkhand (February 2011, 13 conditions). But the MoEF had already earned a bad name. In January 2011, the Reserve Bank had blamed Ramesh’s “environment sensitive policies” for a one-third dip in foreign direct investment (FDI). Since February 2011, the prime minister himself had on various occasions ( here, here and here) cautioned that green regulatory standards might bring back the licence-permit-quota raj, and invoked the economy’s animal instinct. In March 2012, during his official visit to Seoul, the prime minister again assured Lee on Posco but, within days, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) suspended the environment clearance granted to the project. The government had had enough. In May 2012, the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) was mandated by the UPA II to track big public sector projects. In June, the NMCC asked all ministries to provide details of projects above Rs 1,000 crore, prompting them “to indicate whether there are any sector specific issues such as environment and forest clearances which may be causing delays”. Curiously, while complaining of delay in environmental, forest and wildlife clearances, the government, instead of investing in capacity building, started slashing the anyway meager budget of the environment ministry since 2011. In September 2012, UPA II decided to set up the National Investment Approval Board (NIAB) to grant prompt single-window clearances to projects worth Rs 1,000 crore or more. Dr Singh made no bones about how he felt about the green cause the next month. At a global convention in Hyderabad, he committed only $50 million (then Rs 260 crore) to “strengthen the institutional mechanism for biodiversity conservation in India”. Incidentally, the Special Protection Group, which protects the prime minister, his predecessors at the South Block and the Nehru-Gandhi family, was sanctioned Rs 279 crore – a little more than what the country’s biodiversity merited – during 2011-12. Thanks to Ramesh’s successor Jayanthi Natarajan’s stubborn refusal to concede ground to the finance ministry, the NIAB proposal was scrapped and the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) was set up, with representatives from several ministries, in January 2013. But the agenda did not change. Already, the PMO had intervened to end the stand-off between the MoEF and the National Highways Authority of India in favour of the latter. It proposed to do away with the impractical requirement of obtaining gram sabha approvals for roads or power lines that touch many villages. But it also sought to delink environment clearance (EC) from forest clearance (FC). It meant that parts of a project that did not require FC could start construction with an EC and this investment would later justify the FC as a fait accompli. Not only surface transport minister Kamal Nath but a bunch of his colleagues – including coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and oil minister Veerappa Moily – joined the PMO and FM-led charge against the MoEF. Since Moily toppled Natarajan to take over the ministry months before the elections, dozens of clearances have been issued for mines, dams, industries, and now field trial of GM crops. He also eased the rules for a range of projects. Frankly, any rule can be modified by the same process that was followed to frame it in the first place. For example, if Ramesh could issue an order linking the FRA with the FCA, his successor can very well undo it. Nor is anything wrong with the idea of having a bunch of regional clearance committees to speed up the process. And we do need to examine certain impractical demands of the existing rules. But fundamentally, we need two-fold reforms to speed up clearances while ensuring environmental safety. First, we need objective and transparent parameters that do not leave room for biased experts or demand repeated site inspections. To achieve that, we need to put on record the ground status of the natural ecosystems and biodiversity across India. The 2013 report of the T Chatterjee committee to grade forests on a national grid is an excellent model. For relative wildlife value, the taluka-level report of the National Tiger Conservation Authority is a fine starting point. For wildlife corridors, a point of reference is available in a national report by the Wildlife Trust of India. Also, it is very much possible to assess the quantum of development our rivers and the coastline can take. If we have substantial ground data, we can have a national debate involving all stakeholders to decide how much and what all we want to protect. Accordingly, project proponents can furnish data to establish that they do not violate any of the simplified and transparent norms and the regional regulatory panels can check such claims prima facie before deciding on proposals. That brings us to the second part of the necessary reform. Decentralization with final powers to too many clearance panels may spell disaster in a country that traditionally packs such committees with growth hawks. On the other hand, we do not want the regulatory bodies to agonize for too long over the veracity of project documents and delay the process. The onus, therefore, should be on the project proponents. They should face exemplary punishment – not mere conviction of a few officials but long-term blacklisting of companies – for any false claim or violation of conditions. To ensure that transparency, we need to institutionalize independent audits that do not require state sanction. Till now, though, all UPA has been trying to do is undercut the regulatory regime. Asked by the Supreme Court in 2011 to fortify the forest clearance procedure, the government came up with a draft policy this January. Under the old guideline, project approvals are revoked for non-compliance to the stipulated conditions. The new draft proposes to merely “keep such approval in abeyance”. This is all about access without accountability.